Now and again (ok most days) I realise with a kind of resignation that I’m a middle-aged woman. Some of this I acknowledge with relief that I am no longer an insecure twentysomething, I am not yet menopausal, and I enjoy a busy but fulfilling existence with my husband and kids—although I do spend an awful lot of my time driving and doing laundry.
A key aspect of middle age that I’m experiencing is a tendency towards nostalgia: that longing and idealisation of the past. I used to think yearning for the past was uncomfortable, even somewhat depressing. To my surprise, I’ve found it an extraordinary pleasure. I can remember the feel of the mauve taffeta bubble skirt I owned when I was eight. I remember how I felt in my room with my Barbie dolls and the first strain of ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun’ bursting out of my tape deck. I rewatch films like Jurassic Park and Indiana Jones with my teen and tween and I can’t recall being happier. I monitor their reactions to key moments and bore them with backstories, and they make fun of me and my heart fills and spills over.
However, the past is also fraught: memories of shame and embarrassment make us mutter out loud when they hit us in the shower. Regret too, resurfaces when we thought we were over it. Why did I do those things? Why did I let that opportunity slip by? How do we process these emotions and memories? Some feel good, others feel bad, and all shape our experiences and choices in the present.
Yearning for the past, whether real or imagined, has an extraordinary weight to it. Like a really good wine, the aftertaste continues long after the consumption. And like really good wine, yearning can be marketed to the right palate.
‘Limbic Capitalism’
‘Limbic capitalism’ as described by David Courtwright refers to “technologically advanced… business systems… that encourage excessive consumption and addiction”. It’s the deliberate design of products that causes us to become addicted to the feelings we get when we “use” them. The products of limbic capitalism can turn us into dopamine scavengers, seeking good feelings when we’ve had a stressful day, when we still have a pile of work we don’t want to do, or when we’re just bored. Software is built to make us want to play yet another round of that game and pay for an upgrade of its features; to keep scrolling the feed, double tap, like and share—and so keep that cycle going.
Social media platforms can apply limbic capitalism to trigger our rage or anxiety; and for some reason, we fall for that, too. But adrenaline and dopamine are not the only things limbic capitalism sells us, it also deals in nostalgia. As one well-worn earworm once put it, “You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness”.
Nostalgic Yearning in folklore
In this cultural context, Taylor Swift is an arch-purveyor of longing, sorrow, regret, idealisation, obsession, and rumination. Her music provokes a sense of nostalgia, even for past regrets and sorrows—it is like a drug injected directly into the veins of those who respond to her.
I’m not a Swiftie. I like eclectic folk, the whisper of Sufjan Stevens’ voice and a finger-picked guitar. I love slightly rough rock and pop, but I’m also a sucker for a catchy melody just like the next person. And in 2023 her surprise ‘cottagecore’ lockdown album folklore won me over. I was going through a time of great stress and change; I was scheduling daily fifteen-minute ‘cry times’ as a neuro-hack to give myself relief; and somehow Swift crept in, whispering in my ear while I cried silently in the car or rode on the tram with my sunglasses on. It became to me like a favourite, well-worn cardigan.
If you’re not familiar with folklore, a lyric from the short bridge on the first track sums it up: “Resist the temptation to ask you / If one thing has been different / Would everything be different, today?” It is more than yet another romantic regret album. There is pining for the love of a friend from childhood in ‘seven’ (“are there still beautiful things?”), the honest declaration of attention-seeking in ‘mirrorball’ (“I’ve never been a natural / All I do is try, try, try”), and the helpless addict who keeps returning to their fix in ‘this is me trying’ (“I got wasted like all my potential”).
I speculate that the impact Swift has in our culture is that we lack space to lament and cry in daily life. We don’t have room to process our regret, longing and embarrassment. We’re expected to, at the very least, pretend we’re ok. Commuting, at work, on a Zoom call, we’re not supposed to admit we feel ennui, regret or pain that our life isn’t going the way we would like it to. Swift’s music gives a voice to these forbidden feelings. Whether those experiences are painful and require delicacy, guilty pleasures like nostalgic memories, or the searing embarrassment of cringe, they are all laid out like a Scandi platter for us to indulge.
Christianity, Nostalgia and Lament
Christians can be prone to a different kind of nostalgia. We love the songs and hymns that we sung during times when we experienced deep connection with God, family and church. This deep connection can be one reason for the conflicts in church life, when church culture changes to reach a younger generation. We don’t like the newer versions, they don’t have the same power to bypass cognitive memory and trigger a deeper, neurological connection. When I’ve visited elderly Christians with dementia who seem absent, singing a hymn from their youth can bring their formerly vacant eyes to life. Even if you aren’t elderly, somehow these moments of nostalgia can feel more real than our present existence.
We Christians, despite having a huge amount of pslamic expressions of pain, fear, rage, regret and shame, can sometimes also lack a space to be broken, flawed and sad people in our communities. On Sundays we need to worship wholeheartedly; in our Bible studies we need to learn attentively; in our prayer meetings, we need to dream big, give thanks and pray for strength. Where do we lament and give voice to our yearnings? Where do we admit that we wish we had done something different in the past? Often it is only in one-on-one pastoral care, professional counselling, or in informal, honest message threads, phone calls or catch-ups. They are private and secret; not for all to see.
There’s a beautiful surrender in giving into sorrow and regret and just letting the tears fall. Swift’s power is that not only does she make us feel, she invites us to feel the feelings with her. At her concerts thousands gather to feel the same emotions at the same time and give them a voice: people can feel those uncomfortable emotions and feel less alone. A few years back I used to select the songs for my congregation. One measure of whether I had picked the right one was that one of my friends would shed tears of joy and sorrow. One of my favourites is ‘Oh Lord, My Rock and My Redeemer’:
O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer,
Gracious Saviour of my ruined life,
My guilt and cross laid on Your shoulders,
In my place You suffered bled and died.
We can be quick to disparage Swifties and their parents, waiting on ticket platforms or wearing bead bracelets, but until we create more spaces for honest healing and vulnerability, people will find those spaces where they can. Our “ruined” lives can haunt us, without finding a place to be expressed. We can sit in pews beside people longing in similar ways, without connecting.
Moreover, alongside our true recognition of the value and beauty of broken, messed up and grieving faith, there is something more.
Contented Yearning
In A Secular Age, Charles Taylor describes the swings between the ecstatic joy of spiritual experience and the desperate misery of feeling distant from God and other humans. His wisdom for a contented life is urging people to find stability amidst these swings: not seeking the highs or fighting the lows but making peace with a middle condition that balances fullness and the monstrous:
The sense of fullness came in an experience which unsettles and breaks through our ordinary sense of being in the world…The routine, the order, the regular contact with meaning in our daily activities, somehow conjures, and keeps at bay the exile, or the ennui, or captivity in the monstrous.[1]
It is the normal Christian condition, to experience these highs and lows. We enjoy an ecstatic experience of God’s presence that breaks through the ordinary and reminds us of the transcendent nature of our relationship with the King of the universe. However, its corollary is the searing reminder of our humanity, the lows of a depressive emptiness, the lonely hours of regret and sorrow, or even the complicated experience of a remembered pleasure that will never be again. But the peace we have in God’s work of salvation, the sure hope we have in Christ’s return, and God’s constant presence with us by his Spirit, enables us to also rest in the spiritual experience of contentment, too.
What can we do with all these highs and lows, all this longing and regret? We do not have to fight our emotional response to secular ‘product’ triggers because rather than succumbing to the addiction that ‘limbic capitalism’ hopes to ensnare us in, we can give thanks to God that he sees us deeply and empathises with our human experiences. We can also continue our plod towards a “middle condition” of contented gratitude.
As Christians living in what is being referred to as ‘late-stage capitalism’, music, experience and human connection have all become products; but our human limitations can remind us that we were designed to be dependent on God. Our sense of longing and loss reminds us that we are sojourners, waiting for the better world we have been promised.
After my surrender to tears on my commute back from school drop-off, I wipe the salt spray off my glasses, open the door and sit at my desk. Every day I commit to embracing the “middle-condition” of an email inbox, a day of Zoom meetings, followed by Mount Washmore, making dinner and the emotional labour of caring for my family. I find comfort in the knowledge that I was created for all these tasks, great or small. I can also recognise the value of my limited, human dependency on God, who is with me in the highs, lows and the mundane middle of this life.
[1] Taylor, Charles. A Secular Age, 2007, 5–6.
